Álvaro Uribe

Álvaro Uribe’s presidencies illustrate how electoral politics and paramilitary power could reinforce one another in parts of Colombia where the national state lacked authority. Elected in 2002 and reelected in 2006, he benefited from stronger support in areas with paramilitaries; in return, his government enacted a lenient demobilization law that, according to the account, institutionalized rather than ended paramilitary influence.

Political setting

The account places Uribe’s rise within a Colombia marked by sharply uneven state capacity. The national government provided security and public services in large urban centers such as Bogotá and Barranquilla, but in significant parts of the country it offered little public service and almost no law and order. There, alternative groups and figures such as Salvatore Mancuso controlled politics and resources. This arrangement was not described as an imminent collapse of the state, but as an enduring lack of centralized authority across parts of its territory.

That imbalance created a mutually reinforcing relationship between peripheral violence and national politics. Politicians could exploit lawlessness in areas beyond effective state control, while paramilitary groups were left to operate with limited interference from the national government. Uribe’s elections and dealings with paramilitary representatives made this connection especially visible in the 2000s.

Elections and paramilitary support

Uribe won the presidency in 2002 after campaigning against the previous administration’s attempts to make peace with the FARC. The account notes a personal connection to that conflict: his father had been killed by the FARC, as had the father of the Castaño brothers. In the 2002 election, Uribe’s vote share was three percentage points higher in areas with paramilitaries than in areas without them.

The gap widened at his 2006 reelection, when his vote share was eleven percentage points higher in paramilitary areas. The account connects this pattern to the ability of Mancuso and his partners to deliver votes not only for Congress and the Senate but also in a presidential election. Their support was particularly aligned with a president whose political outlook they shared and whom they expected to be lenient toward them.

In September 2005, Jairo Angarita, Mancuso’s deputy and a former leader of the AUC’s Sinú and San Jorge blocs, said he was proud to work for Uribe’s reelection. The statement illustrates the open political significance attributed to paramilitary support in the account; it does not treat the relationship as merely a local or legislative matter.

Political exchange and demobilization

After the election, paramilitary senators and congressmen supported Uribe’s agenda. In particular, they voted to change the constitution so that he could be reelected in 2006, a possibility that had not been allowed when he first took office in 2002. Their legislative support formed one side of a political exchange.

On the other side, Uribe’s government delivered a highly lenient law allowing the paramilitaries to demobilize. The account draws a distinction between demobilization and the end of paramilitarism: the law did not eliminate paramilitary power, but helped institutionalize it in substantial areas of Colombia and within a state the groups had taken over and were allowed to keep. Uribe’s role in this arrangement is therefore presented through a sequence of electoral support, legislative cooperation, and lenient terms for demobilization.

Significance within the account

Uribe’s case exemplifies the broader vicious circle described for Colombia: political institutions failed to provide sufficient incentives for public services and law and order throughout the country, while also failing to constrain politicians from making explicit or implicit deals with paramilitaries and other armed actors. Although many aspects of Colombia’s political and economic institutions had become more inclusive over time, extensive areas still experienced lawlessness and insecure property rights. The account treats these conditions as consequences of the state’s limited reach and of political choices, not as inevitable features of the country.

The episode also belongs to the book’s wider argument about how institutions shape development and political power. Elsewhere, it contrasts Atlantic expansion that supported the rise of independent traders in England with colonial systems that imposed or strengthened extractive institutions, and describes European expansion as sometimes destroying local economic activity. Uribe’s political setting is distinct from those colonial histories, but the connective concern is the persistence of institutions that concentrate power and restrict broad participation. In Colombia, the election-to-demobilization sequence shows how national political authority could coexist with, and sustain, powerful local actors beyond effective public control.